Our New Year’s visit to Golden Gate Highlands National Park marked the final stop on our three-week long bush holidays. For this final leg, we were joined by Marilize’s parents and my sister and brother-in law at Glen Reenen Rest Camp.
Glen Reenen, Golden Gate Highlands National Park, December 2014
This Park may have been proclaimed originally to safeguard the awesome mountain scenery, but the hills and valleys are also home to a pleasing variety of birds and animals. We found most of the game concentrated towards the east of the Park, around the Basotho Cultural Village.
Golden Gate’s magnificent scenery and hidden jewels are best enjoyed along the many walking trails traversing the area. Have a look at the posts we dedicated to the Brandwag, Echo Ravine and Mushroom Rocks walks, three shorter hikes that are ideal introductions to this mountain ecosystem.
Golden Gate Highlands National Park was another highlight of the trip and a perfect setting to conclude a wonderful holiday. Quality time spent with dear family saw us home in good spirits and strength for the year that lay in wait. And just to be sure the Park is still as beautiful as we remember it, we’ll return soon enough. We simply can’t stay away from a place this magical.
We didn’t think three weeks in the bush would fly past as quickly as it did. We started of with two nights at Chelmsford Nature Reserve, then three nights at Ithala Game Reserve, three nights at uMkhuze Game Reserve, three nights at Lake Saint Lucia, five nights in Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park, one night at Midmar Dam, and finally four nights at Golden Gate Highlands National Park. By the time we reached home back in Pretoria again, we had covered a distance of 4022km between and in some of our favourite South African wild places. An epic December bush holiday indeed.
Our route between 13 December 2014 and 3 January 2015 (map drawn from Google Maps)
DeWetsWild 